Trying to make meaningful changes to the way in which people work usually results in resistance. Whatever the type or source, you will need to overcome this resistance in order to achieve success with your eSignature and Digital Transaction Management projects.

Whether the push-back is explicit (“our legal department will never will never accept this…”) or implicit (“I don't really want to change the way I work, so I won't”), here are five pointers on how to ensure adoption and achieve value:

1. Get buy-in from your legal team

I have long since ceased to be surprised when, long after an organisation has done their due diligence and the lawyers have given the go-ahead for an eSignature project, a stakeholder assures me that there’s no way that legal/risk/compliance will let it happen. It's good that senior people consider legal implications when doing business; unfortunately (but understandably) their grasp of the issues often falls short of that of their specialist colleagues.

Involve your legal team from the beginning; once they're satisfied, ensure that their opinion is communicated to the relevant stakeholders. Moreover, help your legal team understand what life would be like for them if the risks implicit in executing contracts on paper went away; a Chief Legal Officer can make a powerful Executive Sponsor.

2. Make Friends in High Places

Getting buy-in from someone who has enough clout to mandate that people change their processes for the better is essential. With Cloud applications, Executive Sponsors are often on the business side rather than the IT side. If your exec board wants to see greater compliance, reduce cost or have contracts completed quicker, use metrics such as cost savings, turn-around-time and volume to show them exactly how you’ll help them achieve their objectives.

3. Get the security stuff out of the way

Security people, like lawyers, speak their own language. The only way to reassure a security specialist is to let another security specialist do it for you. Get your security team to talk directly to the vendor as soon as possible.

4. Nominate a champion

Once you’ve got the go-ahead, nominate someone to be responsible for driving your Digital Transformation forward. Making their performance ratings dependent on achieving measurable results often helps…

5. Don’t Go It Alone

Engaging Professional Services is an effective way to close the gap between the potential value of your investment and the value that you’re actually realising.
Cloud deployments differ from many traditional IT projects in that in the Cloud, value is delivered in multiples of one transaction. The more transactions, the greater the value realised.

The technology itself is only one element that governs adoption; how well the application is integrated into the users’ way of working and how you build your DTM program to deploy more use cases are all important factors.

Professional services can help ensure your DTM solution is adopted and providing value. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel; find a vendor with the relevant expertise and make use of it

Kevin Boyle is Head of Professional Services at DocuSign EMEA. Read his blog or connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.